[michaelochurch]

For the 99%, raising money is still hard: so hard that it kills more startups than succeed by orders of magnitude. Middle-class, earnest engineer and professor types just aren't bred to barge into a rich man's office and tell him to give them $8 million, and now, lest they miss out on a huge opportunity.

For the 1%, which has more to do with connections than net worth by the way, it's incredibly easy and any idiot can do it. So, many idiots do.

The difficult part can be what happens after raising money. Some investors are hadns-off and some will micromanage. Some will add and others will detract. Since your investors will determine whether you can get future funding, and will probably make the introductions that lead to partnerships and clients (if you're a service company) you want to make them happy enough that their resources are deployed to your benefit.

The one bit of good news is that "free ride" investors are a minority. Most have too much ego, which can be a force for good (if they help you succeed) or bad (if they try to manage you). They exist, but they're not common. They do seem to be more common in New York than in the Bay Area.